They might find a way of passing the presidency on to Don jr.
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Could be… Trump is definitely a byproduct of his time and he fits in well with the modern authoritarian movement like Berlusconi’s and Orbans… But even there are parallels with the past of fascism in Europe. The media was critical to the fascist project in both Germany and Italy.
No, but the right is certainly still in ascendancy there, too.
I think we’re in the middle of this… whatever this is, but I don’t know where the start of this was? It’ll be future historians who figure out how this all fits together with previous iterations of the far right - whether it’s a break or a continuation. I sort of feel like we should see it as a continuous historical flow? The defeat of the nazis did not “end history” with regards to fascism, rather it went underground and sussed out new ways to survive and thrive in a world that we thought had rejected their project. But much like white supremacy, we never really fully denazified the world. If we take seriously that fascism was colonialism turned inward, then we never really dealt with the realities of how colonialism (and capitalism) fucked the entire planet over. We never fully decolonized, but just tried to reconfigure it…
I don’t know where this is going, but I guess I’m just thinking out loud here…
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I do too. Clinton’s center-left policies like “triangulation” and so on seem like an iteration of neoliberalism to me now, a form of capitalism that Obama did little to counter, and while Biden did enact a sort of New Deal lite in some ways, I’ll always remember emblematic things like his “Hey, I’m a capitalist!” or the way he never seemed to have anything to say about the federal minimum wage staying the same throughout his presidency.
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I just got an invite to an online meeting with Joe Trippi. Should be interesting. It’s Chatam House rules, but I could post notes.
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I percieve it as continuous through my lifetime. I do not remember a time or a world where the backlash was not in full swing and being enacted upon my generation. As generations have joined me the backlash has never stopped. The answer to “me too” has been “we know and we rape you on purpose to hurt you just to prove we can.” The answer to “black lives matter” has been “no they fucking don’t.” The answer to “maybe some white men actually are victimized by the economy though” has been “and so what, who hasn’t, fuck 'em.” The answer to “our children are being shot in schools” has been “fuck your feelings.” And it goes on and on…
I do not remember it ending. And I damned sure don’t remember a beginning. I only remember each successive cry of pain as the march continued over us.
The people living in the US, whatever their individual intentions or situations, were not making any progress of any kind I truly understand. We were simply failing to hold our ground.
The whole time I have been told I am ungrateful for the rights I am losing too.
I don’t have a kid to try to explain it to but if I did I wouldn’t be able to.
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Officially, Mike Johnson would be next after Vance. IF he’s still SpeakHouse.
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It might be more a case of apples & oranges, though, since Italy has had 69 governments since WW2. But, to your point, society didn’t collapse.
“…may serve as a flotation device…”
One thinks of Yeats’ “widening gyre,” except he was a misanthrope & I wonder if we was writing about that with glee…
(ETA b/c all thumbs)
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I do, and I feel like I’m failing.
I don’t lie to her or indulge in all the toxic positivity that’s all over the very few “progressive” online spaces where I lurk but don’t post, but I have to edit a lot out to not crush her already anxious soul outright. Right now I validate her feelings, I agree that things look difficult going forward, I remind her that we are incredibly privileged which might mitigate the direct impacts, and I tell her that we will have a responsibility to use that privilege for good, whatever that ends up being.
That’s all I have right now, and it feels completely inadequate.
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You’re doing your best, so that’s more than enough… 
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Hm. On January 20th, If the President-elect can’t assume office, the VP-elect is sworn in as President.
But what happens if they were both struck by a giant space-cheeseburger on Christmas? Would it be Johnson, or the person with the next highest Electoral College total?
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Have you seen “King Ralph” with John Goodman and Peter O’Toole?
addendum: this scene is an electrician’s nightmare.
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Damn! If Wikipedia is to be trusted, it looks like the Speaker of the House.
The section also provides that if the president-elect dies before noon on January 20, the vice president-elect becomes president-elect. In cases where there is no president-elect or vice president-elect, the amendment also gives the Congress the authority to declare an acting president until such time as there is a president or vice president. At this point the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 would apply, with the office of the Presidency going to the speaker of the House of Representatives, followed by the president pro tempore of the Senate and various Cabinet officers.[11]
(That’s a short chain of succession since there would be no Cabinet officers.)
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Yep. Nearly every fox"news" deluded trump voter is babbling “If only Harris wasn’t so… then she’d been elected”. And we all know she never “was so…”. Among so many that ‘get me’ are: “If democrats weren’t such war-mongers…” uh…what!? The tiniest bit of questioning and you find that they’ve swallowed whole the putin propaganda against support for Ukraine. That is, help putin or you’re a “war monger” @#$!! trump voters are a slimy linear combination of hateful misogynist racists who have been brainwashed into thinking their hateful misogynistic racism is completely justified. And there’s a helluva lot more of them than my worst nightmare @#$!!
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Sucks also how the analysis is almost never “What are so many deluded know nothings thinking that would make them vote for such a misogynistic, racist, etc. scumbag??”
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